The Great Western Society: A Tale of Endeavour & Success

Preface

I have known Didcot Rail Centre for many years. I had visited it for pleasure many times and had even filmed there when making a BBC documentary to celebrate GWR 150. And as I lived in Oxfordshire for many years and frequently had to take the train to London, I always looked out of the window as we drew into Didcot station in the hope of seeing something on the move or an interesting item parked outside the shed. So I was delighted to be invited to write this history of the Great Western Society. But, like I suspect many visitors who come to the Centre, I had only a hazy idea about the work that had gone in to creating the experience I was enjoying. Visiting it again with the book in mind was a very different experience; exciting certainly, but the overwhelming impression was one of admiration for what has been done and is still being achieved.

Research was based in part on documentary sources – I was supplied with Newsletters from the earliest days and copies of the Great Western Echo. These were invaluable but I could never have written the book without the help of the volunteers and members of the permanent staff who took the time to show me round and to sit and talk about their own particular areas of interest. I also received help from members of the Firefly Trust and the Swindon Panel Society. There are too many for me to name every individual, but I owe a special debt to Richard Croucher for organising the various visits that I made to Didcot in 2017 and 2018. I am also grateful to everyone who supplied the photos that illustrate this book – the vast majority have been supplied by Frank Dumbleton and Laurence Waters. The book could not have been produced without them. Various people have read the text and offered their comments, but any errors that remain are entirely mine.

We live in an age of metric measurements, but in the days when the Great Western were building railways, locomotives and rolling stock, everything was in the older imperial measurements. I have used those measurements here, because they seem more appropriate. A locomotive might run at Didcot at a working pressure of 200 pounds per square inch, and that is what the pressure gauge will indicate – not 13.8 bar. Similarly, when the engineer decreed that an engine should have 6ft drive wheels that is what he got, not 1.83 metres.

Anthony Burton

Stroud 2019

CHAPTER ONE

Why Great Western?

It perhaps seems slightly perverse to start an account of the Great Western Society by appearing to question its very existence. But it is a question worth asking because it seems there is no railway company anywhere in the world that has attracted so many supporters nor roused such enthusiasm. So, what is the answer? In fact, there is no single answer, but instead a happy combination of factors that combine to make the company’s title more than a mere example of public relations hyperbole; the Western Railway was, indeed, Great.

The first factor has to be the man who became the Chief Engineer responsible for planning and building the line, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. His name regularly crops up in any list of greatest Britons of all time and almost invariably he would be the only engineer to get a mention. He is an instantly recognisable figure with his stove pipe hat and big cigar but what makes him stand out from his contemporaries is the breadth of his achievements, his audacity and his absolute determination to do things his own way regardless of what the rest of the world might think. All these traits appear when we look at the Great Western.

It is still astonishing to realise that when he was appointed as Chief Engineer, Brunel was still only 27 years old, and yet was quite happy, from the first, to ignore precedents and the notions of more experienced engineers. When George Stephenson first began building steam locomotives, he did so for existing colliery lines that had originally been worked by horses. When he moved on to the more important lines, the Stockton & Darlington and the first inter-city route, the Liverpool & Manchester, he simply stuck with the same gauge, which would eventually become standardised as 4ft 8½in. Brunel began from a very different position, by asking a very fundamental question; what would be the best gauge to ensure fast, comfortable travel? And, of course, the answer he came up with was his broad gauge of 7ft. The way he laid out his track was also fundamentally different, as we shall see later. He was a man who made his own decisions. When a gentleman by the name of Dr Dionysus Lardner, considered one of the most eminent scientists of the day, declared that travellers would not survive a journey through the proposed tunnel at Box, he ignored him and was proved right. When other engineers declared that the flat brick arches of the bridge across the Thames at Maidenhead couldn’t possibly stand, he built it anyway – and it still survives to this day. Not that he got everything right. If his own ideas about locomotive construction had been allowed to prevail, the result would have been a very poor service indeed. Fortunately, he had enough sense to hire a brilliant young man called Daniel Gooch, who at once put the Great Western at the forefront of development. Brunel’s determination to go for the new and experimental did not always lead to triumph – and few of his decisions were more disastrous than that to install the atmospheric railway when extending the route westward from Exeter. Its failure might have resulted in many companies giving their engineer the boot; but such was Brunel’s reputation and charisma that he was simply allowed to replace the system with a conventional railway and to continue his work of extending the Great Western Railway empire.

The Great Western Railway in its heyday; Firefly leaving Box Tunnel.

The Great Western continued to spread, from London westward to the tip of Cornwall, up into South Wales and north towards the Midlands. It covered such an extensive area that when other railways were grouped together into four main line companies in 1923, the GWR was the only one to retain its identity. This is another factor that ensured its popularity, its sheer longevity. Even after nationalisation, when it finally lost its noble title and became merely mundane Western Region, the area covered had scarcely changed and the character of the GWR lived on, particularly in its fine fleet of locomotives. No other main line railway company had such a long life. And for much of that time, it retained its innovative spirit that had begun during the reign of its first engineer, thanks to the Great Western’s ability to attract mechanical engineers of immense skill and imagination, such as George Jackson Churchward and Charles Benjamin Collett. The company was also leading the way in such important elements as the introduction of the electric telegraph and being recorded as the first railway in the world to have a locomotive travelling at over 100 miles per hour, with City of Truro in 1904, even if some railway historians have questioned whether it actually happened. There was always something new for railway enthusiasts to admire on the Great Western.

The Great Western was always looking for new ways to attract passengers, so the Cornish coast became the more exotic Cornish Riviera.

There is another factor here that is not perhaps so immediately obvious; the GWR were superb publicists, who presented an enticing image of what the company had to offer. From the start, they encouraged commercial companies to produce guides to the line and were probably the first railway company to employ an advertising agency. But the advertising really got into its stride in the twentieth century, and especially in the 1920s. The company realised it had a unique status, and while the new groupings were just starting to create an identity for themselves, the GWR stressed tradition. The coaching stock reverted to the old chocolate-and-cream livery, yet at the same time they promoted the exciting image of express locomotives, handsome in green with brass topped chimneys and sloping boilers. They were telling a story; we have been around a long time and have a great tradition, but we have not stood still – we will carry you to your destination in comfortable coaches hauled by the very latest, most powerful and fastest locomotives.

Many items were produced to attract the young – who would be the paying passengers of the future.

The main objective was to encourage passengers to travel, especially to the holiday destinations of the West Country. Special trains were given such exotic names as The Cornish Riviera Express, suggesting that a holiday in Newquay would be much the same as one in Nice or Cannes. Magnificent posters were produced, together with a series of guides called Holiday Haunts, and the young were tempted with jigsaws and painting books. All this was aimed at the general public to encourage ticket sales, but there was a growing realisation among the newly formed publicity department that there was also a lot of interest in the locomotives for their own sake. 1911 saw the publication of Names of Engines that would be expanded over the years into several editions of GWR Engines, Names, Numbers, Types & Classes. A new hobby had been born, train spotting, that was to grow in popularity through the years, encouraged by other publications, written as was the guide to GWR engines, by W.G.C. Chapman, aimed at ‘Boys of All Ages’ – girls it seems were not even considered as possible railway enthusiasts at that time. They were hugely successful – The 10.30 Limited, for example, sold over 70,000 copies in six months, figures which, alas, the modern railway historian can only dream of.

The publicity machine helped to create a huge interest in railways, but very especially in the Great Western. The line attracted a loyal following of enthusiasts who would look down at lesser breeds of railway and many of them retained their childhood enthusiasm for the rest of their lives. It was these young enthusiasts who were to start a process that would ensure that the legacy of the Great Western Railway would live on.

CHAPTER TWO

Beginnings

In 2017, a dismantled footbridge arrived at the Didcot Rail Centre from Southall. Outwardly it was nothing very special, the sort of utilitarian structure you can find at stations all over Britain. But it has a special place in the history of the Great Western Society. It was here that four schoolboy trainspotters used to meet regularly: Jon Barlow; Angus Davis; Mike Peat; and Graham Perry. In April 1961, Angus had just seen his copy of The Railway Magazine. They all knew that British Rail was planning to end the age of steam, in favour of diesel and electric and now the list of steam locomotives that they intended to preserve from that era had been published. Out of the 73 classes to be saved, only 10 were from the Great Western, and Angus discovered to his horror that notable absences from the GWR list were Halls, Manors and 14xx. He dashed off to meet his friends on the footbridge and they decided something had to be done; in particular they wanted to save an example of the 14xxs.

Many enthusiasts might have gone for a Manor or a Hall, but they were more interested in the less obviously exotic 14xx. This was a class of locomotives that took you right back to the age of Victoria, for they were based with a few modifications on the 517 class, designed for branch line passenger trains by George Armstrong, that first went into production in 1868. They were redesigned by Charles Collett in 1932, with a few refinements including the addition of windows front and back to the cab, which must have been good news for the drivers. They were still 0-4-2 tank engines and kept the tall chimney and high dome that characterised so many nineteenth century engines. One can understand why they were worthy of preservation, because they have a number of points of interest. In spite of their general, rather old-fashioned appearance, these were noted for being able to move pretty quickly when given the chance. There is a story that on one occasion, running with just a parcels coach, it actually beat the famous Bristolian into Paddington.

The class was in fact more up to date than first appearance suggests. Saddle tanks are comparatively easy to manufacture; make the saddle separately and fit it over the boiler. But this class introduced what was then the fairly new Belpaire boiler with a flat top so that the saddle no longer could be easily fitted, hence the pannier tanks at the sides of the boiler. The 14xxs were also adapted for use with autocoach of which more later. So, for enthusiasts there was a lot of interest in these particular engines. They were certainly interesting enough for the boys to decide they should do something about it. They all went off to Angus’s house where over cheese on toast they discussed what should be done. The upshot was that they decided to form the 14xx Preservation Society, and as Jon was the only one with a typewriter he was given the job of writing to The Railway Magazine to propose the idea of saving a 14xx. The letter gave no hint of the age of the sender, simply signed J.L. Barlow. It began:

Where it all began; Graham Perry posing on the footbridge at Southall.

‘I am thinking of launching a campaign to purchase a 14xx (former 48XX) class 0-4-2 locomotive from British Railways, with the purpose of preserving it in running order. The cost is £1,150 plus extra costs, such as having 48XX number-plates cast and repainting in Great Western livery. If sufficient interest is obtained, perhaps a pull-and-push coach also might be preserved.’

The boys waited for the letter to appear – nothing in the next issue, nor the next. Summer holidays came round and they went their separate ways, Jon for an adventure holiday in the Lake District, others for a rail trip round Scottish engine sheds. But then the letter finally appeared, and because Jon’s address had been used, he started getting replies. By then they were all back at home, and Frank Dumbleton, another schoolboy spotter, was on the famous bridge when Jon arrived with the news. Frank remembered him arriving on his bike, rumbling over the wooden floorboards and cycling straight past the notice warning of dire penalties for anyone using a bicycle on the bridge. He was waving a sheath of letters, one of which from a Mr. B.H. Farmer of Cambridge enclosed £10. It seemed the preservation society was about to become a reality.

It was decided to form a committee and as not all the gang was available for an instant meeting, Frank Dumbleton was recruited. He was later removed on the grounds that, being at boarding school, he wouldn’t be available for meetings. This turned out to be a temporary measure for he was to be active in the society for years to come. Mike was appointed secretary and had to buy a typewriter for the occasion. After a long discussion it was decided to take out an advert in The Railway Magazine and there was some doubt as to whether it was right for them to spend money sent to buy a locomotive to pay for an advert. They went ahead and took the rather bold – not to say rather cheeky – decision to rename themselves. It was at this stage that Frank was co-opted on again. One has to remember that these were all still teenagers and Frank remembers one winter meeting, when they got into a snowball fight that got a bit out of hand and almost caused a rift among the young committee members.

The first meeting of the grandly named ‘Great Western Preservation Society’ was fixed for the evening of 4 May 1962 at the Southall Community Centre. Angus had reached the age when he could drive and had acquired an Austin 7, which he used to bring a collection of photos, nameplates and number plates to decorate the hall. He was supposed to chair the meeting, but fell ill with appendicitis, and Mike Peart had to step in. He tried to look as grown up as possible in grey flannel school trousers and his father’s sports jacket, but was understandably nervous, when faced with a room full of adults. In the event, the evening was to prove a great success and some important new members were introduced, including Edward Boxall, Peter Lemar, Eric Pascoe and Ken Williams, all of whom brought experience of the adult world and each of them would have a stint as chairman. The Society no longer depended entirely on teenagers.

On 1 June that year, the very first Newsletter appeared, price 3d – or 1p in decimal currency - but free to members. The first news item reported that the membership had now reached the very respectable figure of eighty and the funds had reached over a hundred pounds, not a bad start for the infant organisation. The suggestion made in the original letter was that they might also consider acquiring a ‘pull-and-push coach’. So as well as hoping to buy a locomotive in good order, they were now looking for a pre-war autocoach, also known as an auto-trailer. This item of rolling stock was developed by the GWR for push-pull trains. The autocoach has a driver’s cab at one end. On reaching the end of a branch line, instead of having to run the engine round the train for the return journey, the driver would get out and walk down to the cab at the front of the autocoach. From here he could still control the essentials – regulator, brakes and whistle, via a linkage through the coach to an appropriate locomotive – in this case it would be the 14xx. It must have been an interesting experience for the driver who, for the first time in his working life, was presented with a completely clear view of the whole line ahead, rather than having to peer down the side of the boiler. The fireman, of course, had to stay on the footplate, where apart from his normal duties he also controlled the valve settings. Communication between fireman and driver was via a system of electric bells that also connected to the guard; one ring for start, two for stop and three for blow the brakes off. This system using conventional locomotives, adapted for use with an auto-trailer was an adaptation of an earlier system, which will be discussed in Chapter 5.